Harcourt and Son

Sir William Harcourt's failure to become prime minister and Liberal leader in succession to Gladstone in 1894, his curmudgeonly behaviour to the winner, Rosebery, and the impression that he lacked settled political goals have confined him to a more obscure place in the history of his party than he merits. A.G. Gardiner's two-volume life appeared over eighty years ago, and Patrick Jackson's fresh, scholarly and lucidly written study, viewing Harcourt in tandem with his beloved son and political partner, ‘Loulou’, and based on a much wider range of source materials than was available to Gardiner, is greatly to be welcomed. Jackson deals faithfully with the blustering and overbearing side of Harcourt's nature, which often rendered him an intolerable colleague, and fatally compromised his prospects by alienating the Queen, who found him ‘like an Elephant, so large and big’. If he overstates the redemptive power of the rather ponderous humour which

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